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    My understanding of this map is that it reduces distortions of landmasses. However flat projection of spheres must always compromise somewhere, and in this case areas of ocean are greatly distorted - e.g. the South Africa to Antarctica distance is not more than twice the South Africa to the Arctic distance. While I agree with you that (paraphrasing) "the Pacific is big", I don't think this projection is the best one to show that. Commented Nov 1, 2016 at 20:28
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    Shanghai to San Francisco: 9873 km; San Francisco to New York: 4139 km. That correlates well with the map above. @DigitalTrauma: That is an absurd example, as it specifies objects on opposite sides of the map. There may well be areas of the map with significant distortion, but that is not one as is readily seen by rolling the opposite ends of the map together.. Commented Nov 2, 2016 at 4:02
  • I'd like to upvote this. The Japaense were well aware of their manpower limitations. An invasion or sustained attack on the west coast was simply not realistic, and clearly ancillary to gaining resources and power in Asia. Of course, one could conjecture that had they been successful, they eventually would have turned to the American mainland. Indeed the entire point of the Pearl Harbor attack was to knock out the Navy and force the USA to sue to peace, allowing Japan to run amok in SE Asia and beyond Commented Jan 7, 2017 at 18:33